Synopsis

With Trouble in Queenstown , Delia Pitts introduces private investigator Vandy Myrick in a powerful mystery that blends grief, class, race, and family with thrilling results.

Evander “Vandy” Myrick became a cop to fulfill her father’s expectations. After her world cratered, she became a private eye to satisfy her own. Now she’s back in Queenstown, New Jersey, her childhood home, in search of solace and recovery. It’s a small community of nine thousand souls crammed into twelve square miles, fenced by cornfields, warehouses, pharma labs, and tract housing. As a Black woman, privacy is hard to come by in “Q-Town,” and worth guarding.

For Vandy, that means working plenty of divorce cases. They’re nasty, lucrative, and fun in an unwholesome way. To keep the cash flowing and expand her local contacts, Vandy agrees to take on a new client, the mayor’s nephew, Leo Hannah. Leo wants Vandy to tail his wife to uncover evidence for a divorce suit.

At first the surveillance job seems routine, but Vandy soon realizes there’s trouble beneath the bland surface of the case when a racially charged murder with connections to the Hannah family rocks Q-Town. Fingers point. Clients appear. Opposition to the inquiry hardens. And Vandy’s sight lines begin to blur as her determination to uncover the truth deepens. She’s a minor league PI with few friends and no resources. Logic pegs her chances of solving the case between slim and hell no. But logic isn’t her strong suit. Vandy won’t back off.

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This book will be released on July 16th, 2024. Preorder your book today! 

Review

Deception, Corruption, Secrets, and Murder.

This was quite an engaging mystery novel. Vandy is a PI who has gone through a lot in her life, and these experiences have impacted her thoughts, actions, and choices. Losing her daughter to a senseless incident, Vandy has to leave the police force and sets out on her own as a PI. Now, she is not the best PI, as we discovered while reading this book. She is good and comes to the correct conclusions. But she misses a lot that is right in front of her. She even admits to this when confronted with the facts. I like that she doesn’t think she is perfect and will rely on help from others to solve the case.

There is a lot to unpack in this book, including Vandy’s relationship with her father, the men she cycles through, and the town itself. Even though it is obvious who the killer is (or at least from what is laid out in the book), there were some surprises that I did not expect.

I don’t know if this will become a series, but I hope it will. I can see future cases with Vandy on the case doing her best to put things right that are wrong.

We give this book 4 paws up.

About the Author

I’ve been enchanted with books from my earliest days; one of my first memories is of sitting on the floor in the golden motes of dust flying around the booklined porch my father used as his office. Second grade found me crafting a pastiche on the great Walter Farley novel,”The Black Stallion.” I sold that story, with original cover painting, for .02 cents at our school’s spring book fair. 

My writing took a turn from animal lore when I discovered Sherlock Holmes in seventh grade. Agatha Christie, Langston Hughes, Margery Allingham, P.D.James, Walter Mosely, Ralph Ellison,so many fine practitioners of detective and other fiction influenced me over the years. Perhaps the biggest single influence, however, was my long-standing love affair with newspapers. I worked for professional papers in the rough-and-tumble news town of Chicago since my late teen years. 

Pursuing a doctorate in African history and a career in the United States Foreign Service reinforced my interest in people, places, and writing. Though the settings were not quite so exotic as West Africa, my subsequent career as a university administrator took me to Texas, New Jersey, and right around the world recruiting international students and promoting study abroad programs. I jumped into the world of fiction writing through the stimulating and fun adventure of fan fiction. To date, I’ve published over sixty fan fiction stories since 2012, under the pen name Blacktop.

My wonderful husband, who’s traveled this journey with me, has been a source of insight and common sense for decades. And our twin sons –smart, sensitive, and fun –are the inspiration for everything I do.

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